Queen of Dragons - Shana Abe

The portly man began to trot toward them, followed by the other two. But Sir Rufus was already away from the table, moving with surprising speed toward the wall of folding glass doors that led to the outer courtyard.

"Blast." Kimber pushed back his chair, reaching for her.

"No," she said quickly, and rose to hasten the other way, still speaking, knowing he could hear. Other people were beginning to stand up; the angry man had veered toward Kimber, his voice rising to a bellow. "There will be empty rooms at the top of the hotel, farthest from the stairs."

"How do—"

"Because there always are." She took up her skirts with both hands, dodging tables, the servants trying to speak to her, not running yet, just walking faster. "If nothing else, there's the garret. Don't get caught. Go."

She was nearly to the folding doors; the footmen were distracted, and there were a great many people gaping and pointing at her, behind her, and through all the ruckus and rising voices she heard it again—the eldritch sound. The soft, dreamy reflection of notes—only now it was practically at her side.

Maricara, startled, turned her head, and met the gaze of the woman falling into step beside her. Blond hair, brown eyes, dragon grace and poise and a face Mari instantly recognized—

The other woman grasped her hand and took the lead, guiding them both to the doors, to the dark outside.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It's time I explained Draumr to you, Child of Mud. Some of you will have heard of it already, of course. Some of you are well studied in our ways, and to you the word Draumr might as well be salvation. Or so you would think.

The dreaming diamond, the lost blue gemstone. For centuries it haunted our kind, born as we were amid magma and comets, where we were at the mystical brink of mountain and sky: a perfect, fatal counterpoint to all our strengths. Draumr was a monstrosity rejected by the cosmos, disgorged to earth. Exquisite cold, wicked with song, it crystallized into a drop of unblemished evil. It was never meant to be.

Because it was the only stone ever that had the power to enslave us.

Yes, well might you prick up your ears at this news. It had that power. For centuries it was kept locked in Zaharen Yce, hidden from everyone, even ourselves. It sang a song so enticing there could be no denying it; you drowned in that stone. You lived with its opium saturating your blood, and it was like floating through a waking dream, breathing thick honey, adrift in blissful clouds. Under its spell you had no troubles, no will, no resistance. Defying it was unthinkable. So human or drakon, whoever held the diamond could command us utterly.

We did our best to annihilate it. Even so, twice it nearly destroyed us.

Well.could you do it? Could you bring yourself to crush the most powerful object of pleasure known to your kind? The gem that had but to hum a single, perfect note in your ear to send you reeling into gentle oblivion?

You have your drugs. You have gin and laudanum and all your fine fermented wines. You crave their relief; perhaps some of you, a small fraction, might understand why we never demolished the stone.

We kept Draumr in a vault, in a dungeon, in our castle named after ice and tears, atop its barren peak. We kept it very well until it was stolen from us by a human.

But we got it back.

Some of it.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

He waited for her in a room that had not seen the light of day for at least a season, he would reckon, although there was still a faint lingering of honey citrus rising from the polished wainscoting. All the windows were shuttered, and there were sheets across the furniture. The bed was unmade. Kimber didn't bother to make it. He only snatched one of the sheets and shook out the dust, then wrapped it around himself like a toga, falling back into the chair it had covered.

He'd had to Turn to avoid being pinned by the hotel's overzealous managers. He'd been doing all right until then, summoning all his charm and an entire fiddle-faddle of lies, gradually managing to extricate himself from the most brightly lit sections of the pump room. But the man missing his clothing had also lost Rufus Booke. He wasn't about to lose his other quarry. He'd cornered Kim and right away tried to wrap a meaty hand about his arm. Kim had remedied that with one quick, hard grip of his fingers, still smiling.

The man had paled and Kim let go; after all, it really wasn't his fault, and Booke had made off with what the fellow swore was his new Italian coat.

Kim hoped wherever Booke had managed to leave it, the coat would be recovered unsullied. And quickly.

One of the more uncommon Gifts of the drakon was that of Persuasion, the ability to temporarily command Others, to get them to do whatever they were asked to do. To believe whatever they were asked to believe. It was a notoriously tricky Gift, and although Kim had inherited a trace of it, convincing an entire babbling chamber full of people of his innocence was proving a shade beyond his talents.

So he had offered to take their business out into the hallway—the less illuminated hallway—and in the ensuing argument and bustle had found just the right second—only that, a bare second—when all four of them had paused by the shadow of another marble god, and none of the Others were looking straight at him. He had said, very calmly, "You will not notice me," had stepped back against the statue and Turned, abandoning his own purloined garments to the floor.

He had not dawdled to listen to their eventual exclamations. If he'd had money, his own belongings, Kimber would have bought his way out of it all; there were fine advantages to being rich. But he could hardly afford to have another fuming, ill-dressed man stumble across them as they negotiated. He'd managed thus far not to mention his name or title. There were plenty of people present, however, who would have been delighted to mention them for him.

It was the devil's choice: Turn to escape, or get snared as the earl.

So he'd Turned, in public, potentially in view of half the ton. It was one of their most hallowed rules, one that might as well have been tattooed across his body, Thou Shalt Not Turn before Humans, and he'd done it just to save his own arse because he couldn't think of a better or more expedient way to escape the situation. When the council found out, there was going to be hell to pay.

It was all a right mess.

On top of all that, he'd lost sight of Maricara. He didn't know where she went, or how she went, only that by the time he'd evaporated into smoke, she was no longer in the same space.

Nor was she anywhere he floated. It wasn't easy to be inconspicuous as smoke inside a closed building. She'd been absolutely right about that. With the slanting rain outside, all the windows were shut tight. It had taken bloody forever to find a door that even had a decent crack around its jamb.

At least most of the Others roaming the spa were downing liquor instead of the water. Tipsy humans tended to excuse most anything.

Kimber scrubbed his hands over his face. She'd been right about the empty rooms, too. There were three of them; he'd invaded the farthest one. He let his arms drop, hanging over the arms of the chair, and gusted a sigh.

If she didn't show up soon, he was going to have to go get her. Under no circumstance was he going to simply wait for her to come to him, not with all that could yet go wrong. She'd said there were no sanf here, he himself felt nothing like that, but still....

He was weary. He couldn't recall the last night's decent sleep he'd had. Days ago. Weeks ago. Before his lovely, troubling, tempting, maddening-beyond-reason princess had shown up, that was for damned certain.

Kimber sat up in the chair. It was dim in here, only slivers of rainlight slanting past the shutters, but his eyes were adjusting. He stared blankly at the wall before him, the cornflower-blue-striped paper, a framed watercolor of coy hares and leverets cavorting in a field of strawberries. He felt the dust of the room in his nose, the threads of the satin in the chair against his forearms.the beech floors, oak joints behind the walls.mice, rapidly scattering to the other end of the hotel.gunpowder and summer flowers, a subtle wafting through the air.

The dragon in him blinked awake. He let it flood his heart, quickening. Let it singe his blood.

She was close. She was here.

Kim cut his eyes to the door. Smoke was curling through the keyhole.

She Turned in midstep, pacing over to a dresser, whipping off the cloth that covered it in an arc of grayish white. She wrapped it around herself just as he had, flipping an end over her shoulder.

"Pleasant," she said, glancing around.

"Adequate," he responded, and gave a narrow smile. "How good to see you, Princess. Any lasting repercussions?"

"No. A gentleman stopped me briefly in a hallway with his hand upon my arm, but he apologized profusely when he realized I wasn't his wife. It seems she has a gown exactly like mine. By the time I made it out to the courtyard, your squire was already gone. And you, my lord?"

"Nothing I couldn't handle."

"They didn't catch you?"

"Not for long."

"I see." Elegant black brows lifted in what might have been astonishment, or just plain amusement. "You're shedding your vaunted rules like last year's scales."

"You do seem to have that effect upon me."

She gave a bow in her sheet, as natural as any man. "Merci beaucoup."

"Oh, you're most welcome. It's remarkable how easily nearly thirty-two years of hard-won wisdom and restraint are tossed."

"Was it easy?" she inquired, interested. And then: "You're thirty-two?"

"Thirty-one, and yes, extremely. I enjoyed immensely putting myself on display for all and sundry like the village poacher neatly pilloried. No doubt everyone was greatly entertained."

She went to the bed, perched upon the bare mattress and leaned forward with her arms on her thighs. Her hair slipped over her shoulders, a velvet-dark shadow covering her chest. "There," she said softly. "You see? Freedom is pleasurable."

"So is survival," he said, curt. "So are a few other activities I can think of. Perhaps we might engage in some of those instead."

Her head tipped, her lips still smiling. "Sir Rufus is currently downstairs, loitering in the garden as smoke. Don't you think you should go fetch him? He won't know where we are."

Kimber stood. He stared at her another long moment. Slowly her brows arched again.

He Turned. He left the way she had come in.

Mari made up the bed. She'd never done it before; as a child there was no bed to make up, only pallets, and as a princess there were always servants. Servants to tidy the rooms, servants to help her dress, servants to do her hair, and bring her food, and polish her jewels, and watch her with hawk-bright eyes when the prince was not at her side.

So she didn't truly make the bed. She only found a bureau stuffed with clean linens and tossed those over the lumpy mattress. There were no coverlets or even blankets stored anywhere else in the room, but there were five sets of sheets, and that seemed sufficient. It was warm still and she wasn't planning actually to sleep. But she could at least be comfortable while she waited for the earl to return.